Margo Shea

Take a class with me this summer! Online conversations, field trips, occassional class meetings.  You will love it.  Registration Information: click here.  

The Museum of Free Derry has recently drawn fire from all sides for an exhibit that lists the names of all those killed in the area during the early Troubles.  On one hand, relatives of RUC officers killed during the Troubles "find it disgraceful " that their loved ones are identified in a space they consider a bastion of republicanism and which supports "terrorism."  On the other hand, some relatives of Bloody Sunday victims and others object to the full display of names of those killed on the grounds that it shows "complete disrespect for those on the list that have been murdered by the establishment" by having members of "the establishment" listed alongside the Bloody Sunday dead and other victims of state violence.  While the exhibit has been up for a decade, it has received attention recently because of the reopening of the museum after renovations. I was so glad that the Museum of Free Derry received £2.4m to fund renovations and an ex...

This was a really fun TV appearance with three of my best and most delightful students. There is so much I could say here about our Highlander efforts and about how hard these students work, but you should just watch the segment:

A friend of mine posted this picture yesterday: She took it at her dry cleaners.  It led to a very funny thread on her Facebook wall: "Someone might need a tutorial on holidays?" "Police?  Well, they are usually unionized, right?" "Union organizers! They keep us strong and free." "My shop steward definitely keeps me safe from management." And it went on from there.  One person made the case that the dry cleaners' experience was directly connected to the events at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York and  made them, possibly, more amenable to learning the stories of America's labor organizing histories. "History is a weapon." Several people mentioned American flags flying everywhere in honor of Labor Day.  Here in Tennessee, college classes ran on schedule and even the campus post office was open for half the day. Labor Day seemed a non-event. Are we erasing Labor Day from our national commemorative c...

Today, the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience announced its grant awards for 2016. Photo courtesy of SHOUT One grant was awarded to an organization called   Diversity Challenges , whose mission is "to assist culturally specific groups in integrating community relations principles and considerations within all aspects of their work." According to the Sites of Conscience the grant will  fund “Voices from the Vault,” a project that collects stories from former police officers in two police forces on either side of the (Northern Ireland) conflict. The work is groundbreaking in the sense that it is uncommon for state agents in any dispute to talk about their experiences." Ummmm, what? As a public historian, I tend to dismiss academics who get petty about semantics.  They always seem to have an air of the kid in the front of the room just dying to get the answer right. (The kid waving their hand in the air so hard you think they might pee themselves...

According to Northern Ireland elections statistics, only 56% of registered voters in the Foyle District turned out to vote in last month's elections.  As an historian of Derry, this breaks my heart a little. Look at the photo to the left.  Those are real people.  Historical figures, some of them, like Eddie McAteer and Bernadette Devlin McAliskey. Civil rights steward Vinnie Coyle.  Others, probably, not known to me.  And then the faces of the young, the hopeful, the indignant, the worried.  The faces of the civil rights movement.   Which -- of course -- was in large part a movement for for the right for every adult citizen to have a vote.

It is the 100th anniversary of the Easter Rising.  Events throughout the week, indeed throughout the year, are scheduled in Dublin.  It is an interesting moment of looking back and looking forward, as commemorations generally tend to be.  I, for one, think the Republic has only healed from its turbulent history in the wake of the Northern Ireland peace process.  Until then, there were still schisms and wounds.  What kind of nation is Ireland and what kind of nation will it be?  The centenary of the Rising is a good time to ask these questions, a good time to transcend post-colonial collective traumas and still, to carry the lessons of the past to continue to construct a democratic, progressive, welcoming nation that puts the wellbeing of its citizens before everything else. At about 11:00 am on Easter Monday, 100 years ago today, the Irish Volunteers, along with the Irish Citizen Army, assembled at various prearranged meeting points in Dublin, and b...